The dismal year in politics

7:36 PM,
Jan. 1, 2014

Written by

MICHAEL GERSON

The effects of the holiday season linger. Like the post-haunting Scrooge, I am as light as a feather, as happy as an angel, as merry as a schoolboy. And still, when forced to consider it: 2013 was a dismal, terrible, cringe-inducing year in American politics. God help us, everyone.

It was a year in which the left, in implementing Obamacare, showed its worst face: overconfident, coercive, economically irrational and incompetent. The whole enterprise of technocratic planning will henceforth be shadowed by three numbers: three, 500 million and six. Three years to prepare the launch of ...